You might remember some castingnotes about a film called Catch .44. They hit in the summer of 2010, and the names involved in the film are notable, at the very least: Bruce Willis, Forest Whitaker, Malin Akerman, Deborah Ann Woll, Brad Dourif and Shea Wigham. We’ve finally got a look at the film and it is easy to see why we’ve heard almost nothing about this since the first casting was announced: it looks like barely reheated post-Tarantino or Guy Ritchie crime foolishness. Still, check out the trailer below just to hear Whitaker’s accent. Read More »

Please Recommend /Film on Facebook

Celebrity Twitter accounts make some first-look reveals pretty easy. I’m surprised it has taken this long for Arnold Schwarzenegger to tweet out a cast photo from his new action movie The Last Stand. And I’ll say this: in this pic at least, he looks the part of an aged lawman who has retreated to a sheriff post in a small down. That’s Jamie Alexander with Arnie in the header pic; see the full image below for a glimpse of Luis Guzman and Johnny Knoxville as well. Read More »

Today Kim Jee-woon (The Good, the Bad, the Weird and I Saw the Devil) begins shooting his English language debut, The Last Stand. The film is notable for being the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger to a starring role. Arnie plays a former LAPD officer now working as a small-town sheriff, who has to deal with a drug kingpin who is fleeing to Mexico and will pass right through his town.

The obligatory ‘start of production’ press release is below, complete with the same plot synopsis we’ve had for a while. Along with that is the announcement of a few actors who are part of the film, including Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville, and one of my personal faves, Harry Dean Stanton. Read More »

Stacy Keach is the latest actor added to the growing cast of Tony Gilroy‘s The Bourne Legacy, which stars Jeremy Renner as a new ultra-capable agent who emerges from the same training program that created Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne. We don’t know Keach’s role, but do know that he will play alongside (or against) Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton in the film that acts as a parallel storyline to the three existing Bourne films. [Variety]

After the break, you’ll find information about Forest Whitaker’s role as one of the two leads of a voodoo thriller, and Katrina Bowden joins the Paz de la Huerta exploitation picture Nurse 3D. Read More »

Nikki Reed from Thirteen has one of the most horrifying scenes in this week’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, when she recounts her character’s backstory. (Spoiler: it involves gang rape, and the scene is particularly horrifying because it is part of the film’s program to define a skewed vision of sexuality for a young audience.)

But don’t hold Twilight against Reed, who is definitely talented. And she manages to come off looking like one of the better performers in Eclipse (not terribly difficult, unfortunately) and so I’m happy to know she’s been cast in Catch .44, along with True Blood‘s Deborah Ann Woll. Read More »

Must be great to be a new feature director and end up with a cast like this: first-timer Aaron Harvey is directing Catch .44, and he’s got Bruce Willis, Forest Whitaker and Malin Akerman on board to star.

The film is about three women, led by Akerman, who get tied into a weird scenario involving “a psychopathic hitman, played by Whitaker, a grizzled trucker and a delusional line cook. Willis will play the head crime boss, the mastermind behind everything that happens.” The name is a little cutesy, and the plot sounds like it could go either way…but Willis and Whitaker? Yeah, that’s good enough to start with. [Variety]

After the break, Jeff Fahey gets a new role, and a horror thriller with delusions of Hitchcock casts up. Read More »

Forest Whitaker recently dropped out of the Abel Ferrara retelling of Jekyll and Hyde, in which he would have starred opposite Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson. But he’s looking at a role in Little Treasure, an indie that would shoot in Shanghai, with Michael D. Olmos directing.

Josh Goldstein wrote the script, which has an American couple returning to the wife’s Chinese homeland, where they deal with “prejudices, humor, cultural differences and self-discovery while meeting a Shanghai street kid who changes their lives.” That life-changing street kid aspect is pretty off-putting, but I love Whitaker and we don’t really know much about the story, so trying not to pre-judge based on limited info. [Variety]

After the break, Summer Glau is the latest onscreen blogger and 127 Hours has another addition. Read More »

Spike Jonze has produced a new live-action/animated adaptation of Maurice Sendak‘s Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life. The film, a collaboration between the National Film Board of Canada and Warner Home Video, will be included on the Blu-Ray release of Where The Wild Things Are, which hits stores on March 2nd. The 23 and a half minute short film was created by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, the Oscar-nominated team behind the short Madame Tutli-Putli, and features the voices of Meryl Streep, Forest Whitaker and Spike Jonze.

Once Jennie had everything. She had two bowls to eat from, two pillows, and for cold weather, a red wool sweater. She even had a master who loved her. But Jennie didn’t care. In the middle of the night she packed everything she had in a black leather bag with gold buckles and looked out of her favorite window for the last time… Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life follows Jennie’s surreal, suspenseful and unexpectedly moving journey to gain new experiences and realize her dream of becoming the star of the World Mother Goose Theatre.

Warner Bros Home Video has supplied us with some photos, posters and clips from the film, which you can see after the jump.

It’s been quite a while since Walter Hill directed a film that could be called a total success, but I never stop pulling for the guy who directed The Warriors, 48 Hrs. and Streets of Fire. (Even if he also directed Another 48 Hrs. — nasty stuff.) So I’ll take any shred of positive news about his upcoming work, and this news is seriously positive. Hill is working on a film called St. Vincent that will reunite him with his Johnny Handsome star Mickey Rourke. Now he’s added another Johnny Handsome alum, Forest Whitaker, and some other great cast members that should push the film up on my watch list. Read More »